Dear MVP communities and MVP state-certified providers,I’m writing you all with a much needed update on the grant program – thanks for your patience. We’ve currently been focused on getting 288 participants through the MVP certified state provider trainings. We have our last session next Monday and so far the program has been a great success with tremendous participation and a great chance to learn from all of our state certified providers. We know our providers are greatly looking forward to jumping into the process and working with communities. For the rest of this letter click here.On the town side, all communities should have received their initial payment installment in late August/September. Now that the workshops are wrapping up, you are free to get into contract with the certified provider of your choice. Because this is a procurement under 50K and because we registered state-certified providers through an RFP and training process we believe that a community DOES NOT need to post the opportunity but rather can work with the provider of their choosing immediately. That said, we encourage you to consider at least 3 different potential state certified providers in your area with an eye towards the following qualifications:1. Experience working with municipalities, particularly in Massachusetts 2. Strong facilitation and community planning experience 3. Experience with climate change vulnerability assessments, hazard mitigation planning, or other risk assessments 4. Ability to perform GIS analysisWe expect the provider commitment to be about 120-140 hours of work with an additional 80 hours of staff time match from each community. I’ve attached a fact sheet with the items the municipalities are responsible for and the items the service providers are responsible for. We are also developing a draft contract for municipalities to use that will be available next week. For communities who want to take a look at what the process looks like, please visit the Community Resilience Building website at: https://www.communityresiliencebuilding.com/Below I’ve attached a map of all of the communities enrolled in MVP this year. We will be sending around a list of all providers who have attended the training and are scheduled for a training next week for municipalities to begin perusing. Please again consider the qualifications each team brings with them to find the right fit as you look through the list. Please reach out with questions.We expect the next round of MVP awards to be released in the spring of 2018 and we are also accepting applications for communities who feel they have already achieve status on a rolling basis. If you know of a community that feels they should have status based on work they’ve already completed, please tell them to get in touch with me and I can direct them to send the appropriate information to EEA.Katie TheoharidesAssistant Secretary of Climate ChangeMassachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs100 Cambridge Street | Suite 900, Boston, Ma| 617.626.1144​